Starliner Suffers New Problems While Coming Back to Earth

Victor Tangermann

"We would not be surprised if Boeing were to divest the manned spaceflight business."

Homeward Bound

On Saturday morning, NASA's plagued Starliner spacecraft finally made it back to the ground.

The capsule landed in the New Mexico desert after spending just over three months in space. But thanks to technical issues worrying NASA officials, it left behind the agency's two stranded astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, bookending a disastrous first crewed flight attempt.

The pair will have to wait for their ride back, on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, until February.

Signals on the capsule's return were mixed. On the one hand, according to NASA’s commercial crew program manager Steve Stich, it pulled off a "bullseye landing." On the other, the agency admitted that a new thruster had failed during its descent. The capsule also experienced a temporary blackout of Starliner's guidance system during reentry.

It's an awkward situation for the space agency: would Starliner have been able to ferry NASA's missing crew members in the end?

"I think we made the right decision not to have Butch and Suni on board," Stich told reporters on Saturday. "All of us feel happy about the successful landing. But then there’s a piece of us, all of us, that we wish it would have been the way we had planned it."

Double Down

While approaching the International Space Station in early June, five of Starliner's 28 control thrusters gave up, forcing Wilmore and Williams to take over manual control.

Subsequent investigations concluded that the thrusters had overheated, causing a Teflon "poppet" seal to expand and restrict the flow of the oxidizer.

Several helium leaks added to Boeing's growing headache at the time, worrying NASA officials.

The capsule didn't fare much better following undocking procedures on Friday. One of its 12 control jets on the crew module — a different set unrelated to the other malfunctioning service module thrusters — failed to ignite. And a glitch caused the spacecraft's navigation system to go down briefly during reentry as well.

It's still unclear whether Boeing will try to launch its plagued Starliner again. Analysts suggest the aerospace giant may dump the entire project, which has already lost the company well over a billion dollars, instead.

"It’s unclear if or when the company will have another opportunity to bring astronauts to space," Bank of America aerospace and defense analyst Ron Epstein told the New York Times. "We would not be surprised if Boeing were to divest the manned spaceflight business."

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